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Gamereactor Interview (June 22, 2018)
An interview with Co-Director Michel Koch about The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit was conducted by Gamereactor Editor Bengt Lemne during the E3 2018 on June 22, 2018. The full interview can be found here. Transcript "We were surprised to hear that it was a game called The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit that Dontnod was showing at E3, so we talked to co-creative director Michel Koch in an interview about the game." Bengt Lemne: We're at E3 2018. And when I got my eyes on the scheduling and I saw, like, this narrative adventure from Dontnod and Square Enix, I thought I was gonna see Life is Strange 2. And... you managed to surprise me a little bit by revealing this, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit. And it's not a full game, it's something else. Do tell us what's the motivation here? Why did you wanna do this instead of moving directly on to Life is Strange 2? Michel Koch: So first, it's still a full experience. It's a short experience around two hours, or maybe a bit more, so it's not that short. It's really a complete story, there is a beginning, there's an ending. So it's definitely really a complete experience that's set in the universe of Life is Strange 2. So just to quickly explain, we've been working a bit more than two years now on Life is Strange 2 with Square Enix and we'll unveil it in the coming months, and Captain Spirit is really the entry point into the world of Life is Strange 2. When you play Captain Spirit, you will find clues and hints to what the story and characters of Life is Strange 2 will be. And there is also some choices in Captain Spirit that will have consequences in your playthrough Life is Strange 2. But like I said, it's really a self-contained, complete experience. You can really play Captain Spirit even if you didn't play Life is Strange 1 and even if you don't want to play Life is Strange 2. You will have a full story, with a beginning and an ending, and hopefully the development of a character you will love. Bengt Lemne: Yeah, that's one of the first things that struck me when I saw the game here behind closed doors. I felt just how well you've managed to create this kid and how quickly you feel passionate about him. You start to feel for him almost immediately out of the gate, and that's something that's also true with Life is Strange, just how you manage to quickly create this bond with the characters. Michel Koch: Thank you for saying that. At least, that's what we're trying to do, with Raoul and also Jean-Luc Cano and Christian Divine, the writers. This is the same team that worked on Life is Strange 1, and what we really tried to create is believable and relatable characters that allows us to talk about social issues and some real-life issues that we care about and we maybe want to bring some awareness of those issues to the player. So we did approach the character of Chris and the characters we meet in Life is Strange 2 in general the same way - by thinking of what is the story we want to tell, what themes we want to approach, what we want to try at least to make the player experience and feel. When we were working on Life is Strange 2, we had - I won't talk about it, of course, but the bigger story and a lot of things that happen in it, and Chris is a character that we really wanted to give maybe a bit more about him, so that's when we thought about this self-contained side story in the universe of Life is Strange 2. So basically you're playing as Chris, who is almost ten years old, is a young kid with a vivid imagination, who is bit lonely, he has a lot of free time, his father is not taking that much care of him, and you play on a Saturday morning in December. So you can basically do whatever you want with your free time - do you want to stay in your room playing with your toys and telling stories with your toys, do you want to try to help your Dad with the house chores, or go outside, play in the garden, go to your tree house. But what's important is that Chris has a vivid imagination and likes to believe he is a superhero. So when you're a kid with this kind of imagination, everything can turn into a great adventure, and that's when you will discover in the game that, sometimes to escape the reality and harshness of Chris' life, he uses his imagination to make things better and to go into this kind of imaginary world where he's fighting monsters or going to unknown planets or finding treasures. Bengt Lemne: Yeah, I think the intro is beautifully done, where Chris paints his superhero personalty and you get to pick some aspects of that superhero costume and how it sort of looks, and I don't know if that has any other implications, but that's a really nice way of introducing both the character Chris and the concept of the whole game. Michel Koch: Yeah, we think that, everybody has been a kid one time, and we did put a lot of our own memories as kids in Captain Spirit. All the team had their own input in this, and of course we did also some research to be sure that Chris could be a relatable kid from this age and not from the 90's like we were. And thinking of just what your superhero costume can be, something I think we've all done, so starting the game by deciding what is your costume will definitely have some change in the experience where you will need to find and create this costume and it will be different depending on what you did. And the structure of the game is around the fact that, while you're doing your kids play - you're playing with your toys, creating your costume, or going into imaginary worlds - you will also discover, of course, the reality of the story. You will learn more about Chris, learn more about his dad, about what happened to the family, so it's really a way to blend the fantasy of a kid to harsher reality of his world. And that's what we really like to with our games, is to find a way that is relating to the gameplay, because in Captain Spirit, you have the option to use your superpower on several objects, where you can pretend you're a superhero or more vividly go into your imagination. But while we do this, we are also explaining the story of Chris, and you will see that a lot of it makes sense with the narrative of the characters. Bengt Lemne: Something that struck me as well is that how you treat Chris' dad, because obviously he's not in the best state, but I think there's a nice balance of showing his caring side, and... He loves Chris and he wants to be a good father, but perhaps, for some reason or another that we have yet to find out, he's not able to. Can you talk to us a little bit about what it's like to create these kind of characters that aren't black or white, that have sort of more shades to them? Michel Koch: Yeah, you're right, thanks. For us, it's all about the shades of grey while creating characters, because we think that, in real life, nobody is completely white or completely black, it's always about the subtlety of your actions, of what you do and how you are as a human being. And the way we created Charles, Chris' father, is... of course, you have of this classic trope of the 'drunk father', and we tried to not overdo this, of course, and really work on the character on our own. And depending on how you play Captain Spirit, you will be able to spend more time with your dad or less time with your dad, and it will have branches and change in how you experience and feel this relationship with him through the course of the experience. Bengt Lemne: We've got a nice little scene there where you can use the Nerf gun on Charles, and I sort of got the feeling that you can do that a few times and maybe get him a little bit annoyed, if that's what you want, because he had a great reaction the first time, but maybe there's something else as well, that sort of thing. Michel Koch: You'll have to see and find by yourself, of course, but in Captain Spirit, we have a sort of timeline where there are actions or interactions that you can only do if you are at the right place at the right moment, and you can also miss this stuff, you can be outside, outdoors while something happens that you will miss, or the opposite. So it adds a lot of replay value to the story, and we hope that the players will really want to experience it several times to see the different facets and ways you can spend your Saturday morning. So yeah, there will definitely be moments with your dad that can be different from one walkthrough to another. Bengt Lemne: There was something that I thought about when I saw this, and I'm sure you left it vague for a reason, was the little sequence with the walkie-talkie. Now, you talk about Chris being a lonely kid. Is he talking to himself there, or is there someone else or is it imaginary - what's going on? Michel Koch: You're seen the sequence, and he's talking to someone in the tree house, so you'll have to see when you go to this tree house who he was talking to, but he thinks he is Captain Spirit after all, he has allies and he has enemies, so in his world, definitely there are characters that are his allies, a team of superheroes, and there are characters that are a team of supervillains. And you will see - you've heard about it, that there is this "Mantroid" villain that is, basically, his arch-nemesis. Bengt Lemne: I wanted to touch a little bit on, because it feels like you're sort of upping the scale of the amount of things you can interact with. Is that something that will carry across to Life is Strange 2 as well, in terms of your vision for the mechanics of the game, if you're expanding on that, what we can expect? Michel Koch: So, unfortunately, I cannot say anything about Life is Strange 2, but since we are saying that Captain Spirit is an entry point into Life is Strange 2, we can imagine that a lot of things we are developing for Captain Spirit are also for what's next, but I cannot say more about that. Bengt Lemne: So I've got a comment on the visuals - it feels like you're retaining the visual style, but from a technical perspective, you've really upped the ante. It looks really crisp and sharp this time around. What's gone into that? Michel Koch: Oh, thanks. The basic idea with art direction was really to keep it a Life is Strange game. We really wanted that, if people look at screenshots of Captain Spirit, you know that is Life is Strange. So we really retained the stylization of the hair, of the faces, but we really wanted also to improve everything. We have a new engine, we're on Unreal Engine 4, and everything is more detailed, but by still keeping the aesthetics of the first one with the hand-painted textures, the quite stylized shapes, and overall visuals. We also did upgrade the animation system - we have a brand new facial animation system and clothing animation system, and hopefully it shows. The goal is, somehow, to make it look like a CG-animated character, or something like that. Bengt Lemne: It looks very, very cool. Just to finish things off, if you like, sort of... the roadmap ahead, Captain Spirit first coming out and, when we get to know a little more about it Life is Strange 2, what's the map ahead? Michel Koch: Oh, I cannot talk about the map, just that what we know is Captain Spirit is released 26th of June for free, on PS4, XBOX, and PC, and we will be talking about Life is Strange 2 in the coming months. Bengt Lemne: Sounds good. Hopefully not too long from now. Thank you so much for your time! Michel Koch: Thanks a lot, thank you so much! External Links * Gamreactor Interview video Category:Interviews (Captain Spirit) Category:Interviews